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Comment by makecheck | Hacker News Reader

Yep. It is not surprising at all that the term “insulting” appears three times because that’s how it feels for so many reasons.

Remember:

- They pretend with a straight face like it was somehow impossible to sell software or reach customers before their magical store made it happen.

- They pretend like the current “search” feature of the App Store is not a sad reduction of what it used to be (or what it could be if a trillion dollar company put any effort into it at all).

- They pretend to have all these problems hosting apps that are somehow solved by fees, while completely ignoring all the free apps that clearly tax that same infrastructure.

- They conveniently ignore the absurd amount of money they must be making from scams that are constantly top-grossing to add insult to injury.

I could go on but there are entire blogs written about this by now.

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I owned almost every iteration of Blackberry and Nokia's before that. I never once paid for an app on any phone prior to an iPhone. I remember people selling them, but it required me to visit their website on a desktop computer, trust them with my credit card info and then awkwardly get their app on my device through mobile websites or specialized cables plus software on my computer.

In the mobile world I think Apple did indeed lay the groundwork for a viable mobile marketplace.

And except for a few apps like Netflix, I'd happily pay 30% on top of what goes to the dev to avoid having to go through that again.

100% of the sticker price on apps could go to the app maker and then have the fees tacked on top. It would put stronger pressure on Apple to bring down the fees and consumers would actually know where their money is going. (I think the same should be required for credit card fees, fwiw.)

I think clear pricing is a great potential solution to the App Store fee issue. Thanks

When Nokias were a thing, 15 years ago, all computer interfaces were much inferior to what we have today, not just mobile app downloads. Phone hardware was super basic. SaaS wasn't a thing even. Facebook was a hip new thing, only 3 years old. It was a different world not just because of Apple.

> They pretend with a straight face like it was somehow impossible to sell software or reach customers before their magical store made it happen.

I never heard them claim it but speaking as a developer it's obvious that Apple was a driving force here. Sellable desktop software became obsolete due to piracy. Everything is server-based now. Mobile apps, particularly on iOS, is the only place where the general public consistently buys client software. Most people don't want cracked apps on their devices, and they want secure, privacy-focused phones. Apple has had that focus for years.

Err, I think you'll find plenty of people still spending heaps of cash on games than run localy on PC, which is where all the money is in the App Store too.

Phrased differently you'll find these kind of statements in the testimonies by Apple execs in the Epic case. On the other hand your claim that:

>Sellable desktop software became obsolete due to piracy.

Is unfounded. Games are sellable desktop software and they're doing just fine. What people want is fair prices and easy availability, which is the business model of every digital store since itunes.

>Is unfounded. Games are sellable desktop software and they're doing just fine.

On Stream, the App Store, console stores, and other similar plaforms.

> Games are sellable desktop software and they're doing just fine.

Popular ones require an internet connection, and license authentication piggybacks on that. Blizzard and the original WoW's were among the first to do this successfully and the trend continues. Prior to that, people would either crack software and/or refuse remote connections for games that didn't require internet in order to avoid paying for and licensing them.

> What people want is fair prices and easy availability

And developers and investors want to be able to securely sell software. Apple's store provides ease of use along with a secure platform that users trust.

Games have used a form of content protection since the 80s. It's not a new thing. We traded code wheels to CD keys to online activation. Most games actually DON'T require an active internet connection, they require an online activation at install and then they can be played offline. With digital downloads it's basically moot and games can still be pirated anyways. Some big titles like the Witcher 3 are actually entirely DRM free.

Steam is a marketplace that gives developers and investors a place to securely sell software and is easy for consumers to use and have fair prices. And it doesn't require users to give up all control of their PC to the manufacturer. Nor do all purchases have to flow through Valve.

And Steam as a game store predates the App Store by a few years too.

That wasn’t true for iTunes where copying MP3s was trivial. Of course theirs still piracy, but why did the DRM-free Witcher 3 make millions of dollars? Your argument just doesn’t hold up with real life data.

SaaS and subscriptions are more prevalent and successful than software that does not require a remote connection. When client software sells well it's an exception.

Music was completely different. The RIAA was suing pirates for thousands of dollars, and Apple provided both a store and great hardware for their product. People cheered them on for finally convincing the music industry to make content digitally available. It turns out all people wanted was easy access. And now for things that could be desktop software, we have subscriptions, memberships, etc.

> Games are sellable desktop software and they're doing just fine.

I don't know anyone who's bought a PC/Mac game from anywhere that isn't an App Store in the past 5 years. Steam is a juggernaut, and so is Microsoft for that matter.

There's piracy, sure, but I'm not losing 30% of sales due to it.

I currently run a freemium software business just fine for Windows and macOS. Just sign the code for Windows, notorize it on macOS and sell it through a service I use called Paddle that handles payment, international sales tax and licensing for about 6%.

> Sellable desktop software became obsolete due to piracy.

This is almost certainly not true. If anything hurt selling desktop apps, it was Apples policies encouraging dirt cheap apps on the App Store that then led to customer expectations of the cost of apps dropping dramatically.

There were recent stories about how software shops like Panic are going back to selling only desktop apps and ending their iOS apps.

If anything, the technology to prevent piracy had only gotten significantly better by the time ios came out, and companies were doing just fine even before.

How did they encourage dirt cheap apps?

> Most people don't want cracked apps on their devices, and they want secure, privacy-focused phones

I agree - but apple fails on this point.

You should be able to protect your own phone. You should be able to install a firewall or further sandboxing, functions that the app store prohibit.

This is really simple:

- You should be able to find out what an app is doing - you should know what sites an app contacts - you should be able to block this - you should be able to block apple itself

This is so common sense yet not possible using apple's app store.

I think all your points are pretty strange, but this one I don't even understand:

> - They pretend to have all these problems hosting apps that are somehow solved by fees, while completely ignoring all the free apps that clearly tax that same infrastructure.

Clearly they are not saying that each individual app has to bear its costs, obviously free apps are subsidised by paid apps. And they've never said they are "having problems". They are saying that they are providing a valuable service and want to get paid for that.

> - They conveniently ignore the absurd amount of money they must be making from scams that are constantly top-grossing to add insult to injury.

Do you seriously think that Apple wouldn't prefer a world without scam apps, and without revenues from scam apps. It's very obvious that the presence of scam apps hurts their brand, not to mention their main argument for the walled garden, much more than however many hundreds of million they earn from scam apps, if that.

Apple categorically does not want to make money from scams, even the most rabid Apple hater should acknowledge that.

> obviously free apps are subsidised by paid apps

Subsidised for what exactly?

I'm not suggesting that hosting is free, but even free apps make Apple $99/yr in developer license fees.

> Subsidised for what exactly?

The cost of running the appstore, which are astronomical. Not just hosting and infrastructure, reviewing 10000+ apps a day is not free either.

> even free apps make Apple $99/yr in developer license fees

Hosting probably costs more than that if the app is popular. Not just the app, but potentially icloud, notifications etc. And 99 dollars is per developer, not per app.

> ... obviously free apps are subsidised by paid apps ...

If they were so concerned about getting paid, they could easily have an arrangement where companies like Facebook actually have to pay proportional to their use/benefit, aligning incentives. Instead, companies making billions per year pay just $99/year, while developers with a lot less are literally paying a lot more. Obviously, that affects the ability to compete. Worse, the App Store’s economy is so warped that pricing cannot actually reflect true development costs. If Apple wanted to cover infrastructure costs so badly, why would they allow the market to twist to the point where developers cannot reasonably charge higher prices (of which Apple gets a cut)?

> Do you seriously think that Apple wouldn't prefer a world without scam apps ...

One of the trial discoveries was an E-mail from Schiller showing that, while he seemed concerned about such apps reaching the top in 2013, eight YEARS ago, it is still happening (see Washington Post article from just today[1]). A trillion dollar company that is still making money from scams eight YEARS later is showing that it does NOT care about scams. In this case, actions matter, not just words. Scams are stealing money from people, and Apple pockets 30%.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27413934

> - They pretend with a straight face like it was somehow impossible to sell software or reach customers before their magical store made it happen.

I've never heard them claim that. The claim is that for an appliance like a phone - rather than a general purpose computer - device reliability trumps all, including the ability for the consumer to run arbitrary code on the device.

They have claimed multiple times that before the App Store you had to get your programs from a brick and mortar store at a large commission, which justifies their 30%. Conveniently omitting that internet has already existed.

They have. See their responses to the Senate anti-trust panel. Also in numerous interviews.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/28/tech-ceo-antitrust-...

> Opening statement from Apple CEO Tim Cook

> When the App Store was created, the prevailing distribution options available to software developers at the time did not work well. Brick-and-mortar stores charged high fees and had limited reach. Physical media like CDs had to be shipped and were hard to update.

> From the beginning, the App Store was a revolutionary alternative.

> App Store developers set prices for their apps and never pay for “shelf space.”

[...]

> [Apple’s commissions] are vastly lower than the 50 to 70 percent that software developers paid to distribute their work before we launched the App Store.

"Did not work well" is 100% true. It is not the same as "impossible".

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